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Creative Cross-Pollination
Recently, in an online chat group, a friend of mine posted this quote: “My work is not merely about making and achieving a final product to wear or hang. They are my journey, my feelings, and my stories.” — Reiza Wahid I think that could apply to any of our creative efforts. It’s not just the destination. It’s the journey, the learning, the transformation. My friend went on to say, “It’s hard to explain that my diaries and origami give me such joy when there’s not much productive to show at the end. Transformation is the key – transformation of us and who we are.” …
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Daydreaming as an Art Form
“Idle minds are the devil’s research-and-development department.” — Robert Stacy McCain Daydreaming, a definition: noun The activity of thinking about pleasant things that you would like to do or have happen to you, instead of thinking about what is happening now. Daydreaming appears to be the brain’s default setting when no other external task is occupying its attention. For years, those of us who spent hours inside our own heads were considered time-wasters, dreamers who couldn’t live in the “real world”, unsuited for the practical requirements of daily living. We were called Procrastinators and we were taught to wake up and smell the coffee, stop dithering, get back to work and all the other sensible, pragmatic advice that goes along…
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Description—How Much Is Too Much?
Don’t use a five-dollar word when a fifty-cent word will do. — Mark Twain What is Description? Merriam-Webster calls it “an act of describing, specifically: discourse intended to give a mental image of something experienced.” Or: “a statement or account giving the characteristics of someone or something, a descriptive statement or account.” Narrative (the events), and description (how the character experiences the events), are the glue that keeps your reader stuck in your story. If nothing much happens, if the character is not emotionally engaged, then neither will the reader be engaged. Why is Description Necessary? 1. Description is all about the strategic delivery of important…
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Riding the Razor’s Edge
Recently a writer asked me this question: “How can I turn my ideas into fiction? My short stories tend to be small slice-of-life sorts of things.” This is something that I often run into in workshops and classes. People tell me they only write about true events. They don’t know how to stretch their imaginations to turn facts into stories. They’ve never learned the infinite possibilities behind that magical phrase, “What if?” To turn ideas into fiction, take your true-to-life story elements and take them as far into what-if as possible. The key to making a true story fictional is exaggeration. Make the events bigger than…
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“High Concept” Stories
While researching the week’s topic for my seniors’ group, (“A Clever Idea”) I tripped over a phrase that is much revered in Hollywood — “High Concept”. Definition of “High Concept”High Concept is defined by Merriam-Webster as: having or exploiting elements (such as fast action, glamour, or suspense) that appeal to a wide audience. In essence, High Concept is: Premise-driven Suited for a wide audience Unique Immediately intriguing Premise: A High Concept story must have an intriguing protagonist with a challenging goal that is highly significant to him/her, and the outcome must have tremendous consequences for the protagonist and the world he/she lives in. Audience: High Concept stories must…
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One Artist’s Journey
I like to call myself a recovering artist. I like this description because it has a certain curiosity-piquing je ne sais quoi and it references my lifelong addiction to art and creativity. It also raises the question of why anyone would voluntarily quit the enchanting life of an artist. Spoiler alert — doing shows all the time becomes increasingly physically demanding for an ageing painter. All those classy exhibitions certainly look glamorous on the outside, but behind the scenes, there’s a whole lot of grunt-work, and I was fed up with grunting. There’s a classic artist’s joke — Q. What’s the difference between an artist and a puppy? …
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Declutter your Memoir
Recently, I had to mop up a flood in my basement, which forced me to move a lot of stuff I’d been storing, keeping and generally shoving out of sight and out of mind, some of it for decades. You know the kind of thing…”Oh, that’s useful. I’ll keep it until the other one, the one I’m using right now, breaks or wears out or runs out of power/ink/paper” (or whatever is necessary to keep it running). Or, “That belonged to my grandparents. It’s worth something. Maybe Antiques Roadshow will pay me a lot of money for it.” Or, “I just can’t throw out…
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The Song of the Spoken Word
Music surrounds us. Throughout human history, it has played a big part in our communications. But only in the past 100 years has it been available to everyone all the time. Before this, only a few very wealthy patrons could enjoy music in their homes, and only if they knew how to perform, play an instrument or hire someone to play for them. Every religion has used music to praise a variety of gods, (entertainment being a large part of their attraction for the general populace), and indigenous peoples have all had their own styles of music, often used to communicate over long distances, to appease the spirits and to ward off…
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Creative Writing, Productivity, Structure and Plotting, Theme, Purpose and Outcome, Training, Lessons
How to Focus your Blog Post
Start with the End in Mind Recently, a reader asked me, “How do you write a story with the end in mind? How do you know what the end is before it’s written?” He was responding to a blog post in which I wrote about using constraints to spark creativity. One of the points I made was: “Writing with the end in mind applies especially to writing memoirs. When you first apply a life lesson, a theme, a psychological or theoretical point to the memoir as its raison d’être, you don’t need to think about everything that doesn’t fit the point. “But if you don’t…
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Creative Writing, Organization and Research, Productivity, Prompts, Structure and Plotting, Theme, Purpose and Outcome
Less Is More
This morning, I went into my writing group completely unprepared to write. I had to show up at 11:00 a.m. and I’d been doing something else when the timer startled me with its petulant beeping, reminding me to get online immediately, if not sooner! Now, most times, when I go into the group, I know what I’m going to write — at least I have some idea or framework for the words I’ll be putting down — but for some reason, this morning I had completely forgotten that I had to write this blog post, so when one of my writer friends asked me what I’d be working…
